Research On The Constitutive Elements Of Liability For Punitive Damages In Food Area

The design goal of liability for punitive damages in Food Safety Law is to deter people from doing things illegal through adopting serious punitive tactics.To realize this goal,it is imperative to understand its accurate constitutive elements.The Article148,paragraph 2 of current Food Safety Law does not use the expression adopted in the Article 55 of Consumer Protection Law that it does not distinguish the liabilities of punitive damages between two different situations,breach of contact and tort.Although the Article 148,paragraph 2 of Food Safety Law adds ways of compensation and corresponding tortious liability for “loss”,the unified expression would easily cause disorders in judicial application since civil liabilities of different natures have different foundations of claiming rights and constitutive elements.Meanwhile,the Food Safety Law employs “ food safety standards ” as a constitutive element for punitive damages,which has its own advantages and rationality.However,such element is complicated and defective that partial serious illegal acts could not be covered,yet partial minor delinquencies would be contained.And this will lead to the result that liabilities do not fit the illegalness of acts.The proviso part tries to amend such imbalance status through adding excessive limiting conditions(label,specification,food safety,flaw,misleading),which not only makes the regulation too complex to identify,but also causes new situations of imbalance.This article is devoted to amending the constitutive elements of liability of punitive damages in food consumption through analyzing the legislation evolution and issues occurred in judicial application of punitive damages in food consumption.On the issue of determining the liabilities of punitive damages for food consumption,this article utilizes “two-level” identification method which firstly identifies the constitutive elements of liability for compensatory damages and then checks the extra special constitutive elements(subject of right,subjective elements,element of illegality)of liability for punitive damages.In addition,through conducting analysis on each constitutive element of punitive damages in food consumption,the article advocates the idea of using “the violation of legal mandatory provisions” to make up the limited covering deficiency of “food safety standards” and simplifying theproviso to remedy the over-wide scope issue of “food safety standards” so as to realize the goal of “precisely striking” serious illegal acts with punitive damages in food consumption.